posted on April 17: A centre with all the right angles

Students studying angles of refraction at McMaster will soon see their assignments from a new vantage point. The James Stewart Centre for Mathematics, slated for opening in fall 2003 will, quite literally, have all the right angles.

The angles will come from the beams of light that will help to transform a historic building into a modern teaching centre and research facility. Light refracted through big, tall windows, overhead skylights and atria is a key feature of the new facility to be created within the walls of Hamilton Hall.

While the exterior of the historic building will remain virtually untouched, the interior will be completely renewed and renovated. The well-known architectural firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, which is currently retrofitting the Hamilton Art Gallery and built the Fields Institute for Mathematics in Toronto, has been hired to design the facility. The firm and the donor for whom the centre is named share a love for glass and light.

“We wanted a building that would admit as much light as possible and the architect's design, which calls for the creation of two atria within the building, will go a long way towards ensuring that the building is bright and open. The building has beautiful windows and these will play a key role in transmitting the natural light into the building,” explains Matt Valeriote, chair of mathematics & statistics.

The project, at a price tag of $11 million, will illuminate the mathematical sciences program at McMaster. Currently all science and engineering students take math in their first year; a great many students from other Faculties also take math in their first year, so the facility will be widely used. Faculty in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics currently teach over 30,000 units of undergraduate mathematics and statistics in a given academic year. The field is a growing one. The complexity of technology has resulted in a corresponding increase in the demand for mathematically trained individuals. Graduates in the field can look forward to diverse careers in finance, telecommunications, biostatistics, marketing and cryptography.

The Centre is named for James Stewart, a professor emeritus at McMaster who authored one of the most successful calculus textbooks in North America. “James was the catalyst for this centre. He got this project rolling when people weren't sure what it would be,” says Valeriote. Stewart has donated $1 million to the centre. Significant gifts have also come from other private donors including Richard Buckingham, Deloitte & Touche LLP, and the McLean Foundation. The project received funding from the Ontario Superbuild ($3.1 million) and the Ontario Innovation Trust ($1.6 million) programs.

The new facility will feature gathering areas in corridors where students and professors can work out problems at benches and blackboards. “We're aiming to establish a welcoming environment that will be somewhat unstructured and open concept,” says Valeriote.

Offices for faculty and staff, seminar rooms and areas for graduate students, a cafe and student lounge area, tutorial space, colloquium rooms, much needed classrooms and lecture halls and a faculty and staff lounge will be constructed within the building.

Space on the fourth floor has been designated for two new research labs – the Financial Mathematics Laboratory (PhiMAC) and the Applied and Industrial Mathematical Sciences Lab (AIMS). The Department of Mathematics & Statistics is one of the top mathematical research centres in Canada with 34 fulltime faculty and lecturers, 15 post-doctoral fellows and about 40 graduate students.

“Our students and our program have been lost in the General Sciences and Burke Sciences buildings. It will do a lot for mathematical sciences on campus to have this new centre,” says Valeriote. Now interviewing new faculty, he believes the centre will attract new faculty and students. “It raises our profile across the board. Having this totally integrated space make us fairly unique (among mathematics departments) within Canada.”